


Not Exactly Adam and Eve-ing It

by JessyRhian



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 2199 days, Baby!Madi, Bellamy stays behind, F/M, Little bit sweary, Post-Season/Series 04, Rating May Change, Slow Burn Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, a little bit grim at first, and domestic af, because radiation burns, bellamy's a dad, gets a little fluffy, i can't tag, kind of angsty sometimes, mama bear clarke, not smutty, not yet, they find a baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-06-29 23:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15739101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessyRhian/pseuds/JessyRhian
Summary: Raven looks at the syringe like it's a second head, because why is this idiot boy asking her to look at something so small as nightblood molecules when she's focused on much bigger things, like space stations and rockets and docking manoeuvres."What... Where did you get that?""Raven, would it work?"-It sort of hits him that this may be the stupidest thing he's ever done because the rocket is leaving and he's not on it.-Bellamy Blake is an idiot, but we love him for it. He stays behind on Earth during Praimfaya. Set after Season 4, goes along with S5 a little. Madi is teeny tiny.





	1. Chapter 1

PRAIMFAYA

When he finds Echo with a bloody hand pressed to her stomach, all he can think is "Really?!" But he stands her up and sorts her out as best he can, before sending her on her way. He'd come up to the office for the last box of rations, nutrition bars long since past their sell by date. (Although Clarke had said technically these things could last forever, which he's not sure he agrees with. Surely food should... Expire?)

It's there on the desk. Next to a medical briefcase. He forgets about the bars. Nightblood. If there was enough for all of them, maybe they wouldn't have to risk living out the rest of their lives on the ring. There's not enough. He takes the one syringe anyway. The box of rations gets left behind.

Clarke isn't back yet.

"I can't leave her!" He'd been clear on this.

"Bellamy, there's no time! We have to go. You can't stay!"

"What about this? Would this work?" 

Raven looks at the syringe like it's a second head, because why is this idiot boy asking her to look at something so small as nightblood molecules when she's focused on much bigger things, like space stations and rockets and docking manoeuvres. 

"What... Where did you get that?"

"Up there, in the office, it's the only one, Raven, would it work?"

"I don't know! We can't stay Bellamy, we're out of time, please."

"Go, go now, I'll stay, and stick this-" he waves the syringe alarmingly close to his nose.

"Jesus, Blake, you need a vein." Idiot boy. She pulls his glove off and shoves his sleeve up, slapping his arm as fast as she can, because the world is on fire, and they need to go. 

Their eyes meet as the needle punctures his skin. "May we meet again." He's going for sombre.

"Bloody better do, don't die." She retorts with a grin.

"Don't die." 

And then she's gone behind her helmet, and he's left with a dark web blooming under his skin, watching the rocket hatch close and hearing Harper's "He isn't coming?" and it sort of hits him that this may be the stupidest thing he's ever done because the rocket is leaving and he's not on it.

But neither is Clarke. And that sort of makes it okay.

He slams his helmet on and makes sure to check it's fastened properly, because if the last few hours have taught him anything it's that nightblood wasn't an instant solution. That maybe it didn't work. And she's still not back, so he runs up the steps towards the outside, hoping it's not on fire just yet, that she's not dead already.

It's red and furious, flames eating the sky and he can't see the satellite tower anymore. He's not sure if that roaring sound is the world dying or his own breath, his blood thundering in his ears.

"Come on Clarke."

The sky is on fire.

And then he sees her. Tiny in front of the flames. Stumbling in the ash. He runs.

She can't see, both her hands are pressed tight over her helmet where it's smashed, and she falls again as he reaches her and there's no time, everything is burning, but he grabs her arm and pulls her with him. Back to the door, almost there, fire and death alongside them.

There are suits hanging in the entrance so he pushes her ahead of him and grabs what he can, then falls after her, flames roaring inside the walls. He pushes her again and they crash heavily down the metal steps, gasping, gurgling, black blood bubbling from her lips.

The floor lurches under his sticky, stringy melted boots. One arm full of heavy plastic suits, the other around her and it hurts, it burns, but they're inside and he drags her into the office, where it's not on fire yet. 

A flash from before - "I got you for that" - and he's ripping the shattered helmet away, but the new ones don't match so he throws her down and heaves her out of her suit, one limb at a time and she falls against him heavily. No time to check if she's even still breathing. He gets the new suit flat and rolls her onto it, grapples with her unresponsive arms, her legs. No time to be cautious of bent-back fingers, just get it on her and hope it's enough. The walls shake and he thinks the ceiling might crack and crash and so he pulls her under the desk and throws his arm over her chest, as though it would protect her if the world fell down and buried them.

"Clarke." He coughs wetly. "Clarke, can you hear me?" Everything is loud, and then quiet all of a sudden as he hears her rasping breath. Silent. Then she breathes again. She's still alive. "I got you, you're okay, I've got you."

He closes his eyes , and thinks then of Raven and the rocket. Did they make it onto the ring? Did Clarke get the signal sent in time? But he knows she would have stayed and burned trying, so he finds the soft rise and fall of her breaths under the bulky sleeve of his suit, and hopes they made it.


	2. Chapter 2

DAY 1

 

Raven looks down at the fiery planet below. 

"Do you think we can do it without them?"

Murphy swigs from the bottle he found on the window ledge. 

"If we don't, they'll kick our asses."

Raven laughs, and takes the bottle as he offers it to her. 

"Let's get to work then."

 

***

 

Clarke wakes slowly, and there's a comfortable weight across her burning lungs. She can hear Raven, faint, as though underwater. Pain swells across her face as she tries opening her eyes, her eyelids cracked and swollen. Gasping breaths through broken-skin lips. She remembers the glass of her helmet shattered, open to the fire, but it's all there now. 

Her eyes are blurry, and when she sees him she thinks she might be dead or dreaming. He's in the rocket. They're all in the rocket in the sky without her. She blinks and shifts and the weight across her is his arm, and his helmet clacks forward against hers. There are raised, red welts across his cheeks, black around his mouth and splattered like constellations in reverse across the glass of his helmet.

"Clarke! Come in! Do you read me?"

The voice is louder now, but it still doesn't belong. Raven isn't there. She's in the rocket. 

Clarke coughs, wheezes, coughs again, her body jerking sharply.

"Bellamy! I swear to god you'd better not be dead. We made it. Come in. Bellamy!"

Bellamy groans, a long gurgling sound, like wet lungs, and it jolts Clarke into action. He's here. He's alive. They both are. She forces herself to sit up, wincing at the tight prickling in her skin, her hands are burning. They're bunched into fists inside her gloves, the empty fingertips flapping almost comically. It feels like her skin has welded together though, so it's not funny, it just hurts, and she can't get her hands to uncurl.

"Bellamy?" Her voice cracks. "Bellamy, wake up. I need you."

But when he opens his eyes the first thing out of her mouth is "You idiot Bellamy! Why aren't you with the others?"

He sits up slowly, and coughs. More black sprays onto his helmet. He's not sure how they're still alive, the last thing he can remember is fire. 

"I couldn't leave."

She wants to argue, but what's the point when the world's ended and his only escape is long gone by now. She nods instead. "Okay."

"Damnit, come in! Clarke, Bellamy, are you reading me? Answer me right now or I'm sending Murphy back down to kick both your asses."

Raven's voice is clear now, and loud, and panicked in a way that only she could be - stubborn. It wasn't an option for either of them not to answer the radio.

Clarke makes her way to the comms panel, Bellamy right behind her, but her hands are still useless and burning inside her gloves. He clicks the switch. "Raven, calm down, we're here. Copy?"

"Copy that. God, Blake, don't do that to me." A nervous laugh crackles. "Is Clarke okay?"

"I'm here." Her voice sounds wrong. "I'm okay. I was worried the signal wouldn't send, but you made it?"

"We made it. Thank god you're both okay."

***

But they're not really okay. Sure, they're alive, but when Bellamy finally manages to pull one of Clarke's gloves off, she wishes she were dead for a second. 

"Oh shit."

She doesn't open her eyes. She can imagine well enough.

"Right, um, I don't really know, shit, Clarke, I'm sorry."

She opens her eyes for that. "Don't. Don't be sorry. You saved me. I don't think I'd have made it back inside on my own."

Her hand is raw, skin peeling off in chunks. Black smears everywhere and red flesh. Her fingers are stuck to her palm.

"Warm water, I think."

He nods. It takes a while to heat up on the tiny gas stove in the corner, and he pours as much as he dares into a bowl for her, trying not to think about drinking water, and what colour this water will be with her hands in it.

She lowers her fist into it with a hiss and a grimace, and offers him the other glove.

"Get it over with, please."

"Okay. On three. One, two-" he pulls it off. She screams. Black blood splatters the floor. He's not sure, but he thinks he glimpses bone before she shoves it into the water and then he can't see under the grimy surface.

She's crying, deep breaths and hiccups and furious tears. He tries to rub his hand across his face like he always does when he's fucked up, but he's still got his suit on, so all he does is smear more blood across his helmet. He can barely see out of it as it is.

 

DAY 2

He's going to be eternally thankful that Abby hadn't managed to clear out the lab completely. He tries not to think about Monty's hands as he applies the anti-septic salve to her ruined skin, and wraps bandages carefully around each disfigured finger. He doesn't even know if they have bandages up there. 

"Hey."

He looks up, and there it is. Unspoken forgiveness in her eyes, not that she thinks he needs to be forgiven, but he knows that he does. He did this to her hands, he should have been more careful getting the new suit on her.

"Bellamy. Stop. This isn't your fault. Come on, let's run those numbers again."

They had, by best case scenario, enough rations to last them 24 days. Enough water to last a little less than that. Staying in the safety of the lab for more than a week wasn't an option if they wanted to find any food and water out in the ashy world.

Neither voiced it, but they were both thinking it. What sort of food or water could have possibly survived the death wave?

Both then silently decided not to be the first to die, if only to save the other from having to watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback would be gratefully received <3


	3. Chapter 3

DAYS 3-7

Raven calls them on the radio several times a day.

"You know, not that I don't miss you guys, but I sure am glad we had those extra O2 canisters. Talk about cutting it close."

Bellamy tries not to think about what would have happened if they'd all made it onto the rocket.

Murphy calls. "Take a leaf outta my book. Think cockroach. Anything you gotta do to survive... Right? How much drinking water did you say you had?" 

He doesn't ask exactly what Murphy's hinting at. He can hear the smirk in his voice.

Harper calls for medical advice, not having a clue what anything left in the med-bay is. Bellamy passes that one over to Clarke, but then sits in guilty silence as she guides Harper through how to dress Monty's hands, picking at a stray thread of her own bandage as she does so. Bellamy bites his lip. All he can think now is that he's the biggest idiot in the world (not that there's much competition) to have haphazardly ruined Clarke's hands, because who's going to fix him up now when he inevitably hurts himself?

 

DAY 8

It was time to go outside. 

They had the last of the water, the nutrition bars, two shovels made from scrap, but they couldn't take the radio.

"Come on, Raven, it's not rocket science," Clarke had laughed sadly at her, remembering a time of ignition wires, bullet wounds, and a boy in goggles. Why had she never learned to splice a wire? Not that it would have helped. 

They hadn't heard anything from the bunker, but Raven had warned them about the radiation affecting radio waves. The lab's laser communication was technologically insane (Raven's words) which meant it had to stay where it was, hardwired into the mainframe of the lab.

"You about ready?" 

Clarke nods. "Let's go."

They shoulder their packs and Bellamy leads the way up the staircase. Clarke smudges her bandaged, ruined, fingertips through the scorch marks on the walls as she follows. A strange call back to the sky box, where charcoal trees grew on the floor beneath her. This wasn't what I wanted, she thinks. This wasn't my dream.

They manage to squeeze through the crumbling entrance, and then they're out. The world is mute. The fires raged to nothing, the air thick with ash.

Wordlessly they set off in the direction of Becca's house, hoping something, anything, still remains.

When they'd planned leaving the lab, Clarke suggested going there first. It seemed the most logical place to find any water storage tanks, given the shimmering blue pool she remembered from before. It felt so long ago. Before the world ended. If it weren't for Bellamy keeping track of time, she'd have lost count of the days. What was the point of Mondays anymore anyway?

Her eyes flicker to his face more than once as they walk. The nightblood serum had to have worked. She'd clumsily stuck him with enough needles to be sure his body was making nightblood on its own now. The red welts across his cheeks had faded into a permanent blush, stretching down his neck and curling over his ears. Once he heals fully, she isn't sure if his cheeks will ever blush red again.

Their feet slip with each step, the ash giving way easily, and it takes them much longer to reach the other side of the island than they'd hoped. Does it still count as an island with no water surrounding it? Bellamy's not sure. At least they won't have to swim to find the rover. He'll take all the pluses he can get at this point.

Clarke's hand ends up in his, steadying herself, and he's careful not to grip it too tightly. When they break through the charred treeline they hesitate.

"Fuck."

He doesn't know what it looked like before, but from the look in Clarke's eyes, it wasn't anything like the mounds of rubble they see now.

"Come on, we might still find something." He moves forward, gently guiding her alongside him. She doesn't reply. He's trying so hard to stay optimistic, to cheer her up, but she's been so quiet. He's hoping that it's the end of the world that's got her looking so broken, not something he's done.

It's getting dark now, or maybe the ash is clouding the air more here, but when they finally reach the mountain of rubble, they can hardly see.

Maybe they should have kept wearing the suits after all. They're finding it hard to breathe as the wind picks up, curling them inside flakes of ash.

In the end, it's the swimming pool they climb into, half covered with huge slabs of rock that extend several metres over the edges of the hole in the ground. It's the place that looks least likely to collapse on top of them while they sleep.

He tries to ignore the constant growling from his stomach, and instead concentrates on shielding her from the worst of the ash that's blowing in. There are bluish-purple circles under her eyes. She leans back against him and then...

"I was so angry at you for staying." 

He waits for the next part. These were his words after all. Mostly. He knows what the next sentence should be.

"I wish you'd gone with them."

Ouch.

But she relaxes against him, and soon enough, she's sleeping, leaving Bellamy to hope that her dark mood passes in a day or two. The ever-serious Princess really was becoming a downer.

 

DAY 12

When they find the rover, she smiles.

They dig it out together, Clarke ignoring the stinging in her palms as she shovels sand, dust, dirt and ash away from possibly the only thing left from their 'before'.

That was how it was now, in her mind. There was 'before' and 'after'. Before the world ended, it wasn't so great, but they'd dealt with it. Now, in the 'after', she didn't know how she was going to keep him alive. There was no one left to kill to protect him. And what else was she good for?

 

DAY 15

He crashes the rover into a pile of rubble as they enter Polis. She's got the blankets wrapped around her, bundled in her lap, and they cushion her ribs from hitting the dashboard. Bellamy lurches forward and hits the steering wheel with a crunch and a strangled yell.

Maybe he needs to admit that driving the rover is not one of his talents. 

"Oh fuck, are you okay?" Blonde hair brushes his cheeks. He can't breathe.

Clarke grabs his shoulders and pulls him back to lie almost flat across the two seats, crushing herself into the footwell to make space.

"Bell? Bellamy!"

He can taste blood, that weirdly tastes the same as before, even though it's black now. He's never going to get used to that. It's not normal.

Her eyes are frantic. He feels floaty. No, bad word. He feels wavey. Well that doesn't sound right either. Swimmy? Is that even a word. He's not sure. And then she (everything) slips from his sight, so he closes his eyes.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck! Fuck you to the Ark and back Bellamy Blake, you idiot!"

She cannot believe that he's going to die like this. There's blood practically gushing from a large gash on his head, a bruise swelling up immediately down the side of his cheek. His lip's cut too, more blood, and she's severely limited with everything - space to work, medical supplies, and a pair of functioning hands most of all.

"Fuck!"

So she heaves him out of the rover and tries not to let his already bashed-up brain hit the ground too hard. What a kick to the balls this would be, she huffs, grabbing her stupidly small med-kit, if he died not five streets away from a bunker with an operating room and the only two doctors alive on Earth inside.

Once she's got pressure on his head wound, a grubby t-shirt held down by her foot (she could really use an assistant right about now), she leans over towards his waist and yanks his top up to his nipples.

"Bellamy, can you hear me?" She's yelling. She feels his ribs experimentally, pressing harder than she'd been taught to, to compensate for her stupid bandages. She can't feel anything broken, but that's not to say they're not. She can't feel anything at all really.

***

It's the worst stitching she's ever done, and it's on his face. Great. Now she'll either have to bury him looking ridiculous, or else have the weirdly puckered scar reminding her every day of her inability to protect him.

She makes a mental note to insist he never cuts his hair, when he's groaning suddenly, his dark eyelashes twitching.

"What was that about fucking me on the Ark, Princess?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


	4. Chapter 4

DAY 17

He's awake coherently. Finally. She tries to be gentle as she rubs the salve from the lab on his cuts, but her fraying bandages catch his scabs, and he hisses through his teeth at her.

"You broke the rover."

"I'm sorry."

"You broke your ribs."

"I'm sorry."

"You broke your head open."

"I'm sorry."

She looks away, eyes prickling with tears, and whispers, "You broke my hands."

He can't answer that statement. He knows she doesn't blame him for that. Even though he will always feel guilty for the pain she went through, he knows she's just sad and frustrated with her clumsy fingers.

So instead he reaches out and puts his hand on her arm. It's as much of an apology as he can bear to give her, knowing that her hands were the cost of keeping her alive, and he needs her alive.

***

"Have you been down there yet?" It's dusk now, and he's wondering why they're still camped in the back of the rover on the edges of the city.

She looks at him nervously, and then looks away. 

"It's buried under the tower. I couldn't get in."

When they'd approached the city, he'd commented on the tower being blasted away. She'd shivered involuntarily, thinking of anyone still alive caught in the death wave. Neither had considered what the tower might have fallen to ruins on top of.

"Shit."

 

DAY 31

When they'd started digging, Clarke had had that determined, almost cheerful, look on her face. She always did like a challenge. She'd insisted on him only helping with the smaller rocks, and even though he'd pulled a face, he'd gone along with it, mostly because his ribs were bandaged so tight he could hardly move, and also because it hurt a whole lot even to try.

After a few days, they'd realised it was pointless. They kept digging anyway. 

After a week, they'd decided to concentrate on fixing the rover, both agreeing it would be able to drag the entire tower from over the bunker door (both knowing that wasn't true).

Two weeks trying to get into the bunker. And now they were fucked. 

Bellamy hands Clarke the very last little slosh of water. 

"No, you drink it."

"No, you drink it."

"No, you-"

"I will force it down your neck."

So she sips at it, glowering at him, but just barely wets her lips before screwing the canteen lid back on.

The rover is still broken. Neither of them know how to fix it, or even what it is that needs fixing. They are out of food, out of water, and have made no improvements to the tower/bunker situation. In fact, he thinks, they quite probably made it worse. He is still recovering from the cracks and thundering rock as the remaining structure of the tower had nearly collapsed on top of Clarke.

"What do we do now?"

"Got a bar in this town, Princess? I'll buy you a drink."

A beat. He's thinking of "Have one for me" and internally kicking himself, when she grins at him.

"You genius, Bellamy Blake!" She's practically glowing with pride.

"What did I say?"

"There must be loads of stuff around the city! Blankets, and clothes, and pots and pans, boots!" 

She doesn't say it, but maybe food. Maybe, just maybe, water. 

Her wild enthusiasm is catching, and suddenly he's grinning too, caught up in this new Clarke, no, the old Clarke, who's excited and alive and he's going to make damn sure she stays that way.

***

After the first few buildings, they stop being scared of finding bodies. There are too many. Most of them are burned to almost nothing. Just parts of people who used to breathe and laugh, and for a split second, she feels the weight of it all crash onto her shoulders again. She'd wanted to save so many, and had ended up saving so few.

But then she looks at him, he's rolling up a rug, and she's glad he's here. She can still save him, if only from himself and the ridiculous accidents he's bound to have. Her hands are healing. The world hasn't stopped turning. Bellamy is disappearing down a trap door... She stops musing, and quickly follows him.

"Clarke, look!"

And they have food. A whole cellar full. He's giddy, like he was when he found the rifles, way back in the before. Moving around the cool stone room with his flashlight, throwing lids off crates and barrels, looking back at her with each new find.

"Apples, and rabbits, and potatoes, oh my!"

She can't help but laugh. God, Bellamy Blake is such an adorable dork. She knows he's doing it for her, to put a smile on her face, but it's working, so she doesn't care.

***

That night they sit on the roof of the rover, not willing to abandon their old friend on the first real hopeful day, and eat until they feel ill. Bellamy's all jokes and crinkled eyes and smiles, and Clarke thinks that maybe this isn't the end of the whole world after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3 Please let me know if you liked it :)
> 
> Chapter 5 may be a little slower coming - Day 97 onwards is all done, I just need to get them there first ;)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Minor references to child abuse, domestic violence, rape.)

DAY 45

Bellamy wakes suddenly, the sunlight piercing his eyelids painfully, shining bright and burning as it rises above the distant hills. Clarke's beside him, caught up in a heap of blankets, her face flickering into frowns as she dreams. He reaches over to wake her, hesitates, and grabs his boots instead. His chest throbs as he jumps down from the rover, his broken ribs taking much too long to heal for his liking. He pushes the door almost all the way closed, blocking the sun from hitting her face and waking her, telling himself she needs the rest. Really, he needs a break.

He treads the now familiar stone-strewn streets, pauses only briefly at the place he knows the temple used to be, and heads for the half-remains of the tavern instead. It had been so easy to fall into routine. Wake up, eat. Dig. Eat. Tinker uselessly with the rover. Eat. Even though he'd just woken up, he felt tired. He needed that fight back, that thrumming through his veins that took over and gave him the energy to keep going, keep finding out how to survive, how to protect his people.

Moonshine for breakfast?

Whatever the hell you want.

They weren't getting into the bunker. That much was abundantly clear. They could keep digging for years and never get closer than they were right now. Close enough to imagine that if he pressed his ear to the ground, he could hear them. Far enough away to know he'd never be able to.

He pours another drink. Clenches his eyes shut.

Octavia. He can't get to her, can't protect her. He knows how she must be feeling, the layers of rock pressing down on her lungs. He's not there to keep her breathing.

He remembers when she was two, monkeying her way up the bunks, reaching her hands to the cold ceiling as if she could push it away and breathe in the stars. When she was five, hanging upside-down by her legs, hair swinging and laughing as the blood rushed in all the wrong ways, her thrill of dizziness. When she was seven, leaping from chair, to table, to bed, her too-thin limbs aching but exhilarated, pushing her muscles to be stronger, to win at all the games he'd invented to channel her energy.

Wild and impulsive, so alive, full to bursting with wonder.

And every time that turned into her rage at her existence, and his mother had sat there and barely watched, he'd helped her then too. What else could he do? Fury bristled beneath her skin as she hit at him, snarling, like she was going to tear the Ark itself apart with her teeth. (He never doubted that she could have done it.)

He would have been angry at his mother for creating her, but he knew better.

The Ark, his Ark, was nothing like Clarke's.

On his Ark, school friends showed up with bruised wrists, swollen lips, broken eyes. Girls as young as Octavia were traded for, skin bartered for herbs and moonshine, by soulless parents whose only wish was to escape this place, this prison, but there was nowhere to go but the lung-collapsing cold of the stars. They escaped their minds instead, because this was the survival of the human race, and participation in breathing, producing, keeping the generations going, was not optional.

His people didn't fall in love with fluttering eyelashes and honey-like kisses. They were assigned a time period, a partner, and were expected to produce the next wheel to this rotten mechanical society. They weren't permitted the luxury of a family, a home, of a life even remotely worth fighting for.

But he had one. A family. A sister. A responsibility to make things better for her. He knows that she grew up suffocating, but he would not let her hope of being a part of his reality. Instead he tells her stories - never-ending oceans and odysseys, filling her up with endless galaxies of possibilities, making it so she believes with every laboured breath that life is worth living. But he knows she won't be happy with stories forever, how could she be. 

So he'd joined the Guard. His mother had only wanted him to know when the inspections were, getting the information in a way that would save her feeling sick in her own skin and the things she made it do. But he'd felt the chance to make things better, it was tangible, almost within reach. He'd worked harder than ever, every day, because this was how he could help his friends, his sister, his people.

He'd fucked up. It had been two years of planning, of exploring every potential person that might be there, being sure that he could predict their actions, but he hadn't planned for the universe turning against him. Two years of planning, and it all went to shit anyway.

He pours another drink. His third, no, his fourth. What did it matter.

He could have controlled every other cadet there, every kid trusted him. Her most of all. He should have taught her the maps of the Ark. But he'd been so determined that she would never feel the limits of 'that metal passageway leads there, this corridor just goes to here', never be confined to the knowledge that outside of her familiar prison was just more prison.

When they'd hit the ground, so big and terrifyingly beautiful, he felt finally that he'd done it right. She was fearless. She could conquer the trees, the horizons, her eyes bright and unburdened in the endless sky. Not like the others.

The initial, to be expected, joy of being free was short-lived. Soon enough, he saw it. They were scared. They didn't know how to live, how to breathe, without the mandates of the Ark compressing them. Those that recognised him from growing up gravitated towards him. They fixed him with eyes that begged "Tell us how to do this, how to function, how to live down here".

He'd riled against Clarke immediately. What the hell did she know about these kids? His kids. His people.

She knew nothing of their pain.

It was exhausting, like it always had been, keeping track of all their varied circumstances, their fears, their broken childhoods, but he fell back into the role easier than anything. It felt good to be able to shoulder their burdens - he wasn't Atlas, holding the world up, but he tried to be. He took over, directed them into working their muscles hard so their minds were quieter. 

He gave everything of himself to them. He made them believe they were strong.

"Brave Princess." He'd mocked her. She was spoiled, selfish, he was sure. A million miles away from brave.

But then there she'd been. Kneeling in the mud beside him, and she'd done what he couldn't (he'd failed him), and done it with such gentleness. Steady hands on his raw and rotting-looking skin. She wasn't afraid of the sticky realities of death. He remembers thinking maybe they could do this, make it work.

Then she'd ruined it. "The people have a right to know." And he'd realised she was nowhere close to him, to them, when she expected them to share in her logic. How could they? So he'd shouldered that burden too. Giving them the ruthless leader, the executioner, that they believed they needed.

She was drowning in the chaos, but she'd helped Charlotte escape anyway. "I'm not little!" But she was, and he'd hated so much that some filth had convinced her otherwise. And then she had died, and he'd failed her too.

Clarke pulled him back from "He deserves to die" (he didn't) and it was the first time he'd really felt it all cracking, slipping. But she'd been there, and on top of two sets of shoulders, the weight of it all wasn't as heavy as before. She'd shoved him back into one piece, into the person capable of convincing these kids they could do this, they could look after themselves (he'd look after them all).

And now they were dead. He'd let them all down. Octavia was once again buried still-breathing, and he's not sure if he's strong enough to lift the world back up onto his shoulders again.

He pours another drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3
> 
> Thank you for leaving kudos, and comments :)


	6. Chapter 6

She's left him alone for most of the day, but the next time she squints into the half-light of the tavern, he's slumped over, looking like he's going to fall off the bar stool completely.

She makes her footsteps deliberately noisy, kicking at the ash, so she doesn't startle him - the world's too damn quiet - and decides enough is enough.

He's making an odd noise, his shoulders shivering. He's crying, she realises. Too late. He's heard her. The only two people left on Earth, and she can't even give him the privacy to cry. Wonderful Clarke, she thinks. Really fantastic.

But then he's grabbing for her, and she's there, and he buries his head into the crook of her neck and gasps, tears collecting in her collarbone.

She holds him close, pressing her arms around him as hard as she dares with his ribs and her hands and he collapses against her, shaking and he's crying so much she almost misses the words he's spitting out between sobs.

"...couldn't...so little...and she...hurt so much...how do I...can't save them...and she's...and you..."

She's rubbing her hands over his shoulders. "Shhh," she murmurs into his dark curls. "It's okay, you're alright, I've got you."

He stinks of moonshine.

"Alright, Bell, it's okay."

But it's not. None of this is.

It's a long time before he stops crying, stops shuddering names and sorrys from his lips.

Maybe saving him, she thinks later, watching him throw up against a broken building in the moonlight, doesn't have to mean killing anyone else. She might be the Commander of Death, but Bellamy's the one haunted by ghosts.

 

DAY 47

She's tinkering absent-mindedly with something in the rover's engine, trying to convince herself she's being useful, when she spots it. A loose wire dangling from one of the batteries, the edges as frayed as her bandages. It's dirty, and blends far too easily with everything else in the filthy engine. (Raven would kick her shins for letting it get like this.)

"Hey, Bellamy?"

"Yeah?" He's simmering a pot of stew over the fire.

"Know how to splice a wire?"

And just like that, the only friend they have left roars back into life.

He hasn't mentioned the other day, so she doesn't either. He's running through an inventory of the food store, waffling about potatoes sprouting and how many bottles of fermented beer are left and other sort of important, but not really, things.

But she's more aware now that there are oceans inside of him, tumultuous and terrifying. She hates that it had to be so raw for her to realise. She'd relied on him for far too much - to be the good guy, to be the bad guy, to risk and sacrifice, and be with her (together) no matter the cost. 

Her stomach is cold, even as she nods and smiles and eats her stew. She thinks, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

DAY 50

"I don't want to stay here," he whispers that night.

She understands. He knew she would. 

 

DAY 52

He's run out of room in the rover. It's stuffed to practically bursting, if that was even a possibility with its solid steel exoskeleton. Every vaguely, maybe useful thing they'd scavenged had been packed. Boots he'd had to shake toe bones out of. The salted meat and spiced fruits from the cellar. Moonshine from the tavern, and ashy bottles of deep red wine.

He doesn't go near the tower, the temple. He thinks maybe if he does, he'll lie down there and not be able to get back up. 

They haven't really talked about it, the weight of leaving Polis, leaving the bunker buried, but when they set off towards the horizon, the rover kicking up dust in its wake, they feel lighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


	7. Chapter 7

DAY 58

After three days stuck in a monumental cluster-fuck of sand and glass and ash-storms, Clarke's about ready to give up. 

"So, what now?"

"We've gone through them all!"

"We can't have. There must be something left." He's sounding a bit desperate now.

"Bellamy, we've played I-Spy, sung the bottle song, played On Which Planet Would You Rather, done 20 questions, told each other bloody bedtime stories, there's nothing left!" 

He lets out a frustrated growl, and hits the dashboard with his fist. (She still won't let him in the driver's seat, even though it means she's had to sleep with the steering wheel jutting uncomfortably into her legs.) Thanks to their scavenging, they're not remotely hungry, but there's no space to lie down in the back of the rover, which means they're stuck sitting in the front, with no leg room, and no space to move around, and he's tired and achy and bored.

Sulkily, he kicks up at the glove box. It opens and hits him right back on the kneecaps.

Jasper's (Maya's) silver music player slides out. 

"Oh thank god." 

There's still a good five hours of battery life in the rover, given that they'd hardly driven at all before the storm trapped them, so she grabs it from him and plugs it into the speakers. They're blasted immediately with drums, guitars, and voice that isn't either of theirs.

She leans back in her seat and moans happily. "I don't know how much more of your singing I could take."

He snorts. "Speak for yourself! I was about ready to rip your throat out. You are completely tone-deaf, you're aware of that, right?"

She laughs, and decides now is as good a time as any to crack open the next bottle of wine. The angry storm outside isn't showing any sign of letting up, and considering she can't see anything through the windshield, they weren't going anywhere fast. There was only one thing for it.

"Alright, I'm game."

"Knew you'd give in eventually, Princess." His voice full of a wicked smile.

"Same rules as before?" They were doing a really good job at keeping it light, skirting around the horrors.

He nods.

"Go on then, you first."

"Never have I ever.... Never played this game." He's so proud of himself.

"What? That doesn't even make sense!" She drinks anyway. "Okay then, never have I ever... Frolicked naked in a river with Murphy."

"That wasn't frolicking! We were washing!" He drinks.

"Yeah, yeah. Certainly didn't look like it to me," she grins.

"Okay." He sits back against the passenger door and fixes her with amused eyes. "Never have I ever... Fallen down the ladder of the dropship."

She drinks. Pouts. "It was dark!"

"You landed on Miller."

"Oh shush. He was fine! Mostly. Never have I ever tripped over and almost landed in the fire."

He drinks. It'd happened more than a couple of times. "Never have I ever... Tried to use duct tape to hold a cut together?"

He drinks again, at his own question, and she gapes at him. "You didn't...?"

"I did too. Worked pretty well, for about six minutes." He laughs. 

"You idiot," she says, shaking her head at him, before meeting his gaze with a glint in her eye. "Alright. Never have I ever... Had a threesome!"

He tips the bottle back and takes several long gulps. She watches his throat move as he swallows. Guess that clears that up, she thinks triumphantly, remembering those first few days on the ground, the rumours flying around the camp.

"Now you're just trying to get me drunk."

"You're the one who made I-Spy a drinking game," she reminds him, laughing again.

He half-shrugs. She's not wrong. "Never have I ever... Fucked a grounder?"

He means Niylah, but the flash in her eyes before she squeezes them shut reminds him. Lexa.

Without opening her eyes, she reaches out for the bottle. He passes it to her, holding his breath, thinking he's ruined it. She swigs quickly. Then again. A third time. Opens her eyes.

"Never have I ever had a wet dream."

"Not fair! It's not like we can help..."

She's laughing, and just like that, it's easy again. He's reaching for the bottle.

He grabs her arm instead. It's funny, he thinks, how he's never hugged her when he's happy. He pulls her to him, and hugs her now. It's a little awkward at first, her elbow digging into his chest, but she settles herself into his side, and he rests his arm across her shoulders.

The game peters out after a few more rounds, but they share the rest of the bottle anyway, listening to Maya's favourite songs, a dozy lull falling over them. She falls asleep first, her tangled hair tickling his nose, but he can't find himself caring as he holds her and closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


	8. Chapter 8

DAY 67

They arrive at Arkadia by accident. Clarke stops the rover. She hadn't meant to drive them here, in fact all of the usual landmarks were gone. The lake dusty, the treelines splintering in charcoal heaps, unfamiliar. It's as though it was calling me home, she thinks. Home to see what I've done. 

She looks at the twisted metal of the gates, heaves in a breath as she feels body upon body pile against her chest, tiny hot tears making tracks down her cheeks.

She's quiet, but when he reaches for her she falls into his arms easily (no elbow in his ribs this time) and rubs her wet cheeks roughly across his shoulder.

"I'm tired." 

"So rest. I'm not going anywhere."

How she wishes that wasn't true, because the years of the empty world and all of its ghosts are stretching impossibly ahead of her now. How easy it would be to clamber through the deformed walls and curl herself into whatever's left of the bodies. To lay down in the ash of her failure.

She'd fought so hard to save them, and they'd all died anyway.

He's stroking gentle hands over her back. It's too much. It's too much. She blinks wildly at the soft-blue of his shirt, and then she can't breathe (but she's gasping so fast), she can't breathe.

She reaches over him, punches the door open and tumbles out across his legs.

On her knees in the dead grass, eyes flashing from brokenness to brokenness, and it all swells up, rises searing inside of her.

She screams. Shell-pink fingernails flaking as she grips the flesh of her thighs, clinging onto herself as she feels her skin in flames.

"Clarke." His hand on her shoulder.

"I've lost everything," she shouts, "My father, my mother, my friends." Her throat feels charred with it.

I wish I wasn't left to miss you.

Her bones are quaking. But then he's in the ash with her, arms around her lungs, clutching her tight enough to bruise into himself. He can feel the fires in her blood.

"It's okay, it's okay." Even though it's not.

He rocks her, reminding her that she's not alone in this.

"I wish you hadn't stayed," she chokes out. So then I could give up without failing you too.

"That was never going to happen."

"I tried so hard." She's sobbing again.

"You did the best you could, Clarke, like always."

She's not strong enough to fight him, not anymore. 

"I'm here, I'm not leaving, so you can't either." Warm whispers in her hair. "We can still do this."

***

Later, as he's picking his way through the armoury, he thinks Jasper was right. It's all a big cosmic joke. The universe was never on his side, not up on the Ark, not when they landed in trees of war with children, not when they did everything they could to save them, and failed.

***

"Let's not stay." His voice is soft, rolling out into the cotton-wool silence between them. 

Her eyes are red-ringed, swollen. This wasn't home. It wasn't home back in the before, it wouldn't be now.

She starts the rover wordlessly. They don't look back.

 

DAY 75

They drive to the coast, and clamber through sand and dust to the sea. The waves slap gently at their feet, as if to say "I'm still here. I'm still here." She buries her toes in the sand and raises her face to the stars. So am I. So am I.

Side by side they stand knee-deep in bone-strewn swirls, and watch until the dawn bursts across the sky.

 

DAY 80

They drive to the mountains, and hike through cinder-forests until their legs ache and they reach the summit, breathing deep and dizzyingly sweaty. Winds tugging their hair into tangles, they lie back and watch the constellations bloom. They're still here, he thinks, they're still here.

 

DAY 85

They drive to the cliffs, and swing their legs over the endless air, hills rolling under them, smudgey dips and soft-rocked rises. They build a fire, and stand in the crackled-warm, fingers curling together, and she says "You're still here" with grateful, seaswept eyes.

 

DAY 90

They drive to the island, blood rushing as they think of the radio, their friends in the sky. We're still here. We're still here.

***

"...two idiots down there. If you are receiving, please respond. This is Captain Awesome, calling the two idiots down there. If you are receiving, please respond..."

"Raven! We're here!" 

She responds almost immediately. "Hey! Welcome back! How's it going?"

"It's going okay," Bellamy says, fingers on the radio, his eyes on Clarke.

"It's so good to hear your voice," she says. "How's it going up there?"

"It's not too bad, Monty's algae is finally edible, so that's good."

They hear Murphy's sardonic tones in the background, but can't make out what he's saying.

"And Harper? She doing okay?"

"She's good, great actually, a lot handier with all the med stuff than a gun. Stitched Emori up in no time... and sorted Murphy out when he... well..."

"Emori's alright though? And Murphy? How's Echo?"

"She's fine, he's fine, and we'll get there with her. It's all good. Listen, guys, we've got something to tell you, hang on."

They hear her shouting for the others.

"Sorry, we all wanted to be here. There's something you need to see. We can't tell exactly what it is, but it's green-"

"And green is good," Monty's voice cuts in. They can hear his smile.

Raven carries on, "I'm guessing it's a week or two out from the lab, south-west of your position."

The air is still.

"Did you get that? Bellamy, Clarke, it looks alive down there, you have to go check it out!"

"Copy that, Captain Awesome, we will."

 

DAY 95

They drive to the valley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


	9. Chapter 9

DAY 97

They enter the valley as though underwater. Grass green and soft beneath their feet like a blanket of silent hopes. This. This was a home. A settlement. This was what they had both tried so hard to forge from twisted scrap and broken children, back when they first hit the ground.

This was none of the biting glass-storms or charred forests they assumed was all that was left in the world. Everything softly out of focus as they stand, breathe, drink it all in. Little chimes sing in the air like birdsong at dawn, colours flowing from branches overhead.

Overripe fruit smells everywhere, tumbling from carts into the long grasses either side of the pathway. It only lasts for a second though, before the scent of death washes over them without warning. 

Fitting, Clarke thinks, that they find this miraculous, beautiful place of life, and yet death still invades her lungs.

"Shh!" Bellamy hisses, even though she is silent. Grabbing her hand to still her when she isn't moving. 

While Clarke was overwhelmed by finding death here as well, Bellamy's keen ears had picked out the faintest hint of life.

He holds his breath, straining to hear it again. He's sure he heard it. His lungs begin to protest, stomach lurching in and out emptily. He's about to give up, and accept he'd imagined it, but then there it is. A soft wail. Clarke hears it too this time.

"Is that...?" Her eyes widen in horror. A child. Alone here. Not possible. It had been over three months since Praimfaya. There was no way an infant with a cry that young could have survived alone.

Without having to voice these thoughts, because Bellamy always seems to know what she's thinking, he raises his rifle. They turn away from each other slightly, eyes flickering across the village for any sign of movement.

They move as one, shoulder to shoulder. Soft steps, cautious knees ready to run, to fight. Accustomed to the Trikru ways, he scans the height of the trees but finds most of the upper branches young and spindly, carefully cut back. It allows the sunlight to dapple through easily, hitting the grass in a mosaic of warmth, but seems unable to support warriors that could drop an attack from above.

They're in the middle of the clearing now, next to a charcoal heap of a fire-pit, when it comes again. The cry. Desperate and cracked, like a baby deer with an arrow through its heart.

Clarke instinctively lowers her gun.

"I don't think there's anyone here, Bell."

He too lowers his weapon, relaxes his stance slightly. Surely whoever might be here would have quieted the child by now, or else attacked them already. 

Directly in front of them is a large vehicle, with a flat front and rounded top. A camper van, he thinks they used to call them. There's a door on the side, and curtains hanging across every window down it's length.

The child cries again, louder now.

Heart pounding still at the prospect of what they might find inside, he steps forward when she does and brushes his arm against her comfortingly. She reaches out for the door handle, fingers shaking. It opens surprisingly easily, with a clunk of well-maintained metal and oiled hinges.

It smells awful. Clarke covers her nose with her sleeve and nods resolutely, gathering her courage, and steps up and inside. He's so close behind her she can feel his breaths against her shoulder blades.

One small moment of stillness as they blink against the loss of sunlight, picking out the shapes of a small cushioned bench, a few blankets folded in a pile, a pair of boots neatly placed together. 

And then the cry. Tiny arms, even tinier fingertips, grabbing at the air above a crib set against the back wall. 

A baby. Clarke's held breath whooshes out of her in an "Oh!" and suddenly she's there, looking down on the one thing that seems most out of place in their dead world.

She hesitates for just a second, but that's all it takes for Bellamy to reach past her and scoop the baby into his arms, cradling it against his chest and adopting a steady bounce immediately. His rifle clatters against Clarke's boots.

"Here." She grabs one of the blankets from the bench and holds it out, Bellamy working quickly, transferring his hands one over the other to hold the baby close while unwrapping it from the soiled cloths. He holds the baby away from his chest just long enough for Clarke to tuck the clean blanket around it, before once again clasping the squirming bundle close and turning to leave. One last glance around the van, and Clarke makes out the mural painted above the crib, impossibly bright flowers and vines twirled around one word - 'Madi' - before she follows Bellamy and the baby back into the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


	10. Chapter 10

The first thing he does is sit, cross legged in the green-gold light. Clarke joins him, mirrors his pose, her eyes wide as they meet his.

"How?" It's barely a whisper, heavy breath over his lips.

He lays the bundle, the baby, down in the nest created by their legs, and swings his pack off his back. He rummages for his canteen without looking, unable to pull his eyes away from the tiny face looking up at him. Clarke watches him, can almost see his mind hurricaning in spins of how is this possible, how is she alive, how do we help her.

He wishes his hands weren't so grimy, tries to wipe off as much of the dirt as he can, before tipping his canteen up and placing droplets of water from his fingertips on the baby's blood-cracked lips. 

"We need to clean her." Clarke's voice is quiet but full of a firmness that calms him ever so slightly. She would know what to do.

Clarke grabs her own pack, pulls out the soft cloth she'd been using as a scarf, and starts to dampen it. The water is cold from her canteen, and when they unwrap the baby and wipe her softly, she cries harder and kicks her legs into Bellamy's stomach.

He catches both her tiny feet in one hand and gently holds her legs so Clarke can clean her skin. There are sores covering her back from where she'd lain in the wet and dirty crib. Red webbed with black where she'd bled. 

"Will she be okay?" His voice cracks.

She doesn't know, but she says, "I think so. We'll find her some food, keep her warm and dry, dress her wounds..."

He brushes a shaking hand gently down the baby's cheek. The baby catches his finger in her mouth, and begins to suckle at it. He can't breathe for a second, suddenly overwhelmed by the likeness to the only other baby he'd known. But the memory of his baby sister is shoved aside quickly when Clarke speaks again.

"Someone else had to have survived. There's no way she was alone for more than a day. Bellamy, we should look for them. They might be hurt. Whoever it is, they haven't been back, and she wasn't being quiet."

He nods, but doesn't move his finger from the baby's mouth. "She's hungry."

"Okay, feeding first."

Clarke moves quickly around the small village, finding berries that aren't yet mouldy, a bowl that looks clean enough, a jug of soured milk that she retches at but gives her hope of finding an animal somewhere. She glances back at him frequently, sitting so still, contained in wonder and hope and possibility, his whole body gathered around the baby. A sudden cold aloneness settles over her.

"Here." She passes him the bowl of mashed berries, and while he uses his fingers to feed the baby, she grabs her gun and ventures further out of the clearing.

Near to where they'd entered, set away from the huts, she finds the bodies. Lain out in circles around the trees, wrapped in colourful cloths that hid their decaying flesh, long grasses and brambles curling over them. Clarke can't look away. The air hums with the bugs. 

Bellamy feeds the baby as much of the berry mush as he can before she interrupts him with a tiny-enormous yawn and slips into sleep. Her chin stained purple, her cheeks pale. Dark curls around earlobes as small as his little fingernail. He waits for only a minute, marvelling at the miracle of her, before looking up and finding Clarke gone. He gathers the baby up in the blanket and raises her to rest her head on his shoulder.

He finds Clarke beyond the wooden huts, stood still in the scent of death.

"Clarke?"

"I don't understand. Why wouldn't they burn them?"

"They aren't Trikru, remember. Maybe they do it differently here." He's trying not to breathe. "Come on, let's look somewhere else." He tugs her sleeve, but she seems reluctant to follow. "Clarke, come on, the baby..."

At that she allows herself to be pulled away from the strange graveyard and back into the village.

***

They find her by the river. Splayed out across the rocks, white-grey hair trailing in the water. Clarke reaches her first, and Bellamy sees her checking for a pulse as he carefully picks his way down the rocky slope, the baby curled still sleeping in his arms.

"She's cold."

The woman was old, older than any grounder they'd met before. His eyes glance over the woman's hands, stained purple like the baby's face, then to the rocks under her head, matted black with dried blood. He holds the baby a little tighter and imagines this woman realising that she alone remained of her people, left to care for the baby and dress the dead.

He hopes that her death was quick, that she hadn't lain injured, bleeding, knowing that without her the baby would die too.

"We shouldn't leave her here."

Clarke reaches for the body, but he stops her. Hands her the baby instead.

He bites his lip as he lifts the woman's head, feels the cracked and broken skull under her thinning hair. All bodies were heavy, and this one especially so. He heaves the slump of her into his arms, fixes his eyes on the brittle-soft bones of her wrist to avoid her dead and staring eyes.

***

Later, once he'd returned from placing one more body in the shadow of the trees, they build a fire. Clarke had found a large tin bucket, perfect for heating water to bathe the baby.

"You should name her."

She looks up at him. "She already has a name."

"Oh?"

"Madi."

The baby gurgles in her arms.

"Madi." He lets it roll through his mouth slowly, watching as Clarke smiles at her in the flickering glow from the fire.

 

DAY 98

The sun breaks softly through the leaves overhead, waking Bellamy slowly. He stretches under his blanket, feeling the damp dewdrops tickle his bare toes, his body heavy and well-rested. They'd fallen asleep by the fire. The baby. He twists suddenly, feels his neck crack and winces, but catches sight of her dark curls poking out from Clarke's blankets.

"Hey, you're awake," she says, glancing up at him, eyes pale and tired.

"Hey. Did you get much sleep?" 

Her blankets shuffle as she shrugs. Madi snuffles closer to her chest.

"Not much." She yawns, looking down at the baby's head. "She's a bit wriggly. And you were snoring. Again."

But when she looks back at him, she's smiling. 

"Sorry."

He reaches his arm out and brushes her tangled hair away from her eyes, before unravelling himself from the weighty warmth of his blanket. 

He coaxes the fire back to life, realising Clarke must have been up and about most of the night to keep it going, and sets a pot of water by it to heat, before remembering the rover wasn't there. They'd had to leave it way out on the edges of the valley, the trees too close to drive through at the speed they'd wanted to explore.

"Bellamy? Is there any tea?" 

Right on cue.

"It's still in the rover. Hang on, I'll look around, there's probably some here somewhere." 

The dew-strewn grass feels soft and clean on his feet as he walks from hut to hut, poking his head into each painted doorway. In each room the air seemed to still, moments from someone else's before suspended, gently awaiting what the world brought next. He is thankful once again for the woman who had collected the dead from their homes. A bowl of browning apples the only hint of death.

He find the apothecary behind a door adorned with flaked-paint vines. Rows of shelves, stocked with jars and jars of powders, dried roots and leaves. He breathes in the spiced air, and walks into the room. He runs his hand along the jars, ignores anything that doesn't have a label, before finding what he thinks must be tea. The inked figure on the label a woman formed from soft curves, a cup depicted with steam lines in front of her chest. The mixture inside smells like tea, so he takes it to Clarke for her approval. 

She sniffs at it, dabs a crumbling leaf to her tongue and nods.

"Yep, that's tea, perfect." She yawns again.

He's going to make it just for her (he's never really liked tea) but ends up pouring himself a cup too, just to be safe, and burns his tongue as he gulps it down.

"Bellamy, just give me my tea please."

Well, he hasn't keeled over and died yet, he supposes, so he hands it over.

"Ah," she sighs happily, scooting up to sit back against a log, inhaling the tendrils of steam. "Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading <3
> 
> And so sorry for the long wait for this chapter! I'll try to keep uploads more regular from now on :)


	11. Chapter 11

It's strange, she thinks, sipping her tea, that she'd never held a baby before. She knew most of her peers wouldn't have done, wouldn't have ever expected to before their own child was born. Babies weren't exactly common on the Ark. She'd witnessed four births, but had always been the one to stand with the equipment, to pass things, to fetch things and carry things but was never entrusted with actually holding a baby.

Bellamy had, of course, held a baby for much of his sixth year. She shouldn't have been surprised that he'd swept her up so quickly yesterday. She wasn't even sure how you should hold a baby, but when he'd dumped the bundle of Madi into her arms to collect the body off the rocks, she'd felt silly for her hesitations. Now she realises that the only correct way to hold a baby was to not drop it or break it.

She'd held her for the rest of that day, and well into the night. She'd fed her more mashed berries, dropped water onto her little tongue, changed her, and sung to her under the stars while Bellamy snored.

She supposes she should let him have a turn.

She watches him as he settles under her blanket beside Madi. The two dark curly heads all she can see once he's wriggled down next to the sleeping baby.

"Tea good?"

"Mmm. Perfect." She swigs the last of it from her tin mug, and crawls over to the pot by the fire to pour another cup.

"Tasted nasty to me. You sure it's alright?"

"All tea tastes nasty to you. You uncultured swine." She laughs, pokes his shoulder with her foot, and grins when he grins up at her.

Madi grizzles next to him, eyes blinking open, her pudgy fist in her mouth.

"Clarke," he whines, "You woke the baby."

She tuts, but lets him fuss over her, while she stretches her legs in the morning sun and drinks more of the tea. It really was delicious. The man had no taste.

She finishes her third cup by the time he's changed Madi and mashed more berries, and heads to the wash hut she'd found the day before. After weeks of peeing by the side of the rover, the indoor latrine felt weirdly luxurious, considering she'd grown up with the clinically clean toilets on the Ark. There was a huge tin bath hanging from a hook on the wall, several bowls for water, and even a stockpile of soap bars. Clarke takes longer than necessary, attempting to tame her tangled hair in the cracked glass of a mirror.

When she returns to the fire, Bellamy's bouncing up and down, Madi crying in his arms, his face almost as screwed up as hers.

"She won't eat the berries."

"We need to find her some milk. She must have been fed something all this time, and berries alone just aren't enough. She can't sit or even roll unaided."

"What does sitting and rolling have to do with it?"

Clarke takes the baby, and tries jiggling up and down to soothe her. Madi cries louder, her little face getting lost in the long hair tumbling over Clarke's shoulders.

"It means," she says, trying to pull her hair from the baby's clutching fists and wincing, "that she's probably under four months old, she still needs milk, her digestive system can't really handle much else, not long term anyway." 

Bellamy helps rescue her hair from Madi's grip.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'll see what I can track down."

He pulls on his boots and grabs his rifle out of habit.

"Bellamy?"

"Yeah." He checking the rounds in the weapon.

"Please don't shoot the animals, we need them."

"Oh, right. Yeah."

"Idiot." Clarke shakes her head at him, turns her attention to Madi, and starts humming soft-sunshine songs in her ear. 

Bellamy stomps out of the clearing, his rifle left behind, a coil of rope slung over his shoulder instead. She watches him go, half-amused, half-bereft of the blush she's sure should redden his ears but never will again. She used to enjoy seeing him blush.

"Ah well," she says to Madi, "We can't have it all."

***

He's gone for most of the day, and it's almost strange being without him next to her for so long. Clarke keeps herself busy, exploring the huts, rocking Madi from arm to arm, stockpiling all the food she can find into the cosiest looking home, the one with the biggest bed. She's constantly surprised by how different everything is. She'd somehow believed all Grounders to be like the fierce Trikru, or the war-hungry Azgeda, but nothing she found suggested anything like that.

In one large hut she finds a school. Madi is finally sleeping, heavy against her chest as she moves with steady steps between the tables, her free hand brushing the old wood, imagining all the life this place had seen. Her scarred fingertips linger on a pot of charcoal sticks, but then she sees paints, jars of colours, and pulped paper in stacks. She hurries as fast as she dares to explore the shelves, her mind bursting with all the things she could paint, could coax into blooming under her hands, all the colours she could swirl and mix. She feels almost dizzy with it.

Now this is an art supply store, she thinks. Remembers that one blue pencil and the kisses of a desperate boy. It feels a lifetime ago. Her arms are aching now, so she sits in what she supposes was the teacher's chair, the others made for shorter legs than hers, and leans back to balance Madi while giving her arms a rest. 

"For such a small baby you sure do get heavy." She kisses the top of Madi's head, then freezes, unsure suddenly if that was the right thing to do. Madi's tiny breaths huff over her skin. Her little hand opens and presses itself flat onto Clarke's scalpel scar. It had gone without saying that she and Bellamy were going to care for her, raise her as best they could. Of course they were. But love her as a mother should? She hadn't thought of that. Madi had had a mother, she'd had a clan, a people. Clarke isn't sure if she's allowed to take their place. 

But the tiny fingers against the scar on her chest scratch at her. What was a mother anyway? Someone to protect you. To love you. To fight for what's best for you. Maybe she didn't have the best example to follow. Maybe it didn't matter. She kisses Madi's soft curls again, almost hard but so gentle still. Breathes her in. Holds her against her terrified heart, and lets only a few tears fall down her cheeks. 

When she looks around the room again, she instead imagines Madi growing up here, all the fascinating wonder of childhood played out in this village, her little mind learning in this room, all the pictures she would paint, all the stories Bellamy would tell her, the stars and the oceans colliding in bursts of laughter. She feels fierce all of a sudden.

***

Bellamy returns at dusk, his stomach growling loud enough to scare off any sheep or goat or whatever it was they'd kept here in the now empty livestock pens. The warm scent of dinner called him into a hut painted a faded green-grey. Clarke had lit candles, there were flowers in a jar on the table, a pot of stew bubbling over a small stone fireplace. The baby sleeping in the middle of a bed, surrounded in a swirling nest of blankets.

"Hey," she says, reaching up to brush a leaf from his hair.

He wraps his arms around her, rests his chin on her shoulder, looks sadly at the baby. "I didn't catch anything." Hollow-voiced.

"Come and sit, eat, she's okay for now." Clarke unwinds herself from him, but pulls him, hand in his, to sit at the little table. "I fed her some super mashed up meat, some sort of bird, and potatoes. It'll tide her over for tonight."

"What if we can't find anything, what if she doesn't grow? What if she...?"

Clarke puts a bowl of stew in front of him, and catches his gaze with a look full of fire, flames flickering in her sea-blue eyes. "That's not an option. We'll find something. We're not letting her go."

And as always when he feels like it's slipping, she anchors him. Pulls him from wildness and steadies his chaos-thoughts with nothing more than a moment when her eyes meet his. He nods. 

Clarke watches him as he eats, and then in the darkening glow of the firelight they kick off their boots and climb onto the bed. Madi between them, their fingertips just touching, and they fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


	12. Chapter 12

DAY 99

When he opens his eyes it's to Clarke's messy hair in his face, her forehead almost-not-quite touching his, their bodies curved in parentheses around the baby. He rubs his lips over her head, murmuring, "Morning, I'm heading to the rover, okay?"

"Mmhmm." She doesn't wake fully, but as he rolls off the bed she lolls her hand over Madi's sleeping form and wraps herself a little closer around her, her face leaning close to breathe in her scent.

He stretches in the clear morning air. The trees singing with colours, ribbons and flags and little woven circles all around him. He doesn't think he's ever seen such a beautiful village. 

He gathers more wood for the fire, filling the pot with water and setting it into the edges of the flames, making sure Clarke's mug and the jar of tea leaves were there, before grabbing his rifle (just in case), the ropes, and heading out of the clearing. 

It takes him most of the morning before he reaches the rover, walking with soft steps, eyes sharp and darting into each shadow. He doesn't find any tracks, but decides to set traps on his return. He tries not to think about what would happen if they didn't find an animal for milk, rubs his hand over his face, bites his lips. It wasn't an option, Clarke had said. They had to keep the baby alive.

He sits in the rover, rests his arms on the familiar steering wheel. He's still spinning in what ifs. What if they'd taken a day longer to get to the village, what if the elderly woman had died a day sooner. What if they couldn't, despite what Clarke said, feed the baby. What if she got sick, or he did, or Clarke. His breath ghosts out of him, the endless uncontrollable possibilities screaming in his head. There was no one else. No one to come and help them, or give them advice, or take the weighty responsibility that he knew so well from their shoulders. But his gut lurches with No. They can't have her. And it surprises him.

Sitting back in the driver's seat, he realises that even if they weren't the last, he wouldn't want Madi to be cared for by someone else now. They found her, against all odds, she cried out for them. Perhaps the universe, burned out with the destruction of the world, was taking a break from shitting on him. Whatever it was that led to him finding her, taking her into his arms, he wasn't letting her go.

He starts the engine. He'd been gone long enough.

***

Clarke leaves the hut, Madi in her arms, to find water bubbling by the fire. 

"What shall we do today, huh?" 

Madi gurgles at her, wraps her fingers into her hair, as Clarke sips at the sweet-earthy tea.

She wanders the outskirts of the village, being sure to keep away from the northern point where the bodies lay, instead exploring the livestock pens. Sheep, she thinks, collecting small tufts of wool from the fences. 

A hut for spinning wool into yarn. The looms fascinate her, strands criss-crossing into coloured cloths. The dyeing room a haze of powders. She wishes she could have been here to see them all alive, these people that lived with stained-bright fingers and draped colours in the leaves.

In the apothecary she finds old books, inked words dancing across yellowed pages, illustrations for leaves, flowers, seeds. She settles herself by the fire with Madi in her lap, and reads to her, lilting her voice like a story, not understanding half of what she was saying due to her basic Trigedasleng. Madi didn't seem to mind though.

An odd ache starts up in her tummy. She ignores it at first, comfortable with the book and the baby in the sunshine, but it twinges through her enough to really hurt. Maybe it's the berries, she thinks. She'd eaten them by the handful that morning. Or the stew from last night. The meat rancid, even though it had been cured and smelled just fine when she'd cut into it. Her thigh cramps. She feels sick.

So she settles Madi into the grass on a blanket, and heads to the wash hut, feeling uncomfortably warm and slick between her legs.

When she sees the blood she thinks wildly that she's dying. Her eyes cloud, breath racing in and out, shocked shivers through her spine. It takes her several minutes to realise.

***

Bellamy returns sooner than she expects. She's still scrubbing at her clothes in the wash tub when he pulls the rover to a halt between the outer huts.

"Still nothing." He's glaring at the trees. "Damn sheep. There's wool everywhere, caught on twigs and brambles, but no sign of them, or even any decent tracks and I... Clarke? You okay?" The colour of the water registers suddenly. Black blood. Ruined hands, flesh and bone.

"I'm fine." Her cheeks feel hot.

"What happened? Is Madi-?" He hurries over to her, glancing around for the baby.

"She's fine, stop panicking, I just, it's nothing." She scrubs harder at her trousers with the soap. Doesn't look up. "I got my period."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

She keeps her eyes lowered as he sits back on his heels, stands, and walks away, sure she's embarrassed the hell out of both of them. 

She hears him check on Madi, snoozing in a cocoon of cushions, and then he's gone from the clearing.

Periods were something else rarely encountered on the Ark. Even with her medical apprenticeship. The law stated that an implant be fitted as soon as the first period occured. It was only removed for conception, and a new one was fitted soon after the baby was born. They were to be replaced every five years. Hers should still be working, stopping her body from being fertile, from menstruating.

Her stomach cramps again, she hisses air in through her teeth. The sock she'd shoved in her underwear feels rough against her.

She keeps scrubbing, trying to breathe through the nausea, her eyes clamped shut.

Bellamy's warm hand on her shoulder startles her.

"Here." He's holding out strips of the soft cloth they'd ripped up for bandages. "Go sort yourself out. I'll take over."

And then suddenly he's on his knees, his hands in the blackish water, taking her clothes from her.

"Erm..."

He almost laughs at her expression. "Clarke. My sister never had an implant. How many times do you think I had to sneak into the laundry and wash her stuff? This," he holds up her trousers, "isn't going to weird me out. Besides, it's a lot less gross than Madi's diaper cloths."

He nudges her away with his shoulder, and starts scrubbing the cloth together in circles, not just rubbing soap into the stain like she'd been doing.

"Um. Okay?"

He does laugh then. "Go. I've got this."

***

That night she lies back in the enormous tin bath, her first warm bath ever, she realises. It had taken Bellamy a long while to heat the water and fill it for her. The fire sparks into the stars. Bellamy's low voice hums to Madi in his arms, leaning back against the warm metal of the bath.

"Thank you," she says.

"Hm?"

"Thank you, you know, for today, for this." She gestures in the water, splashing it around her wrist. 

"Sure. So long as you do the same for me when I get my period."

She can't see his face, but she knows his eyes are crinkled, smiling wide.

"You idiot," she laughs, splashing him.

Madi cries out.

"Shit, sorry." She watches as he stands, keeping his gaze carefully on the trees and bounces Madi. She cries louder.

And then the prickling in her chest starts. It swells with Madi's cry. Her arms feel empty all of a sudden. She's overcome with an urge to hold the baby to her skin, to breathe in her scent, rub her lips over her soft cheeks in little kisses.

"Bell? Here, give her to me." She sits up in the bathtub, holding out her arms, desperate to feel Madi's weight against her.

He turns, tries not to look (he can't really see anything anyway) and meets her urgent eyes.

"Um, okay?"

So he passes the screaming baby into her arms, and she settles back into the warm water, Madi half submerged, her wails against Clarke's chest. It takes a moment, but then she finds Clarke's aching breast, and suckles. Clarke bursts into tears. "Oh! Look!"

Bellamy can't help staring now. This is definitely not how he'd ever imagined seeing Clarke naked. 

"You okay?" His voice is gruff. He clears his throat. Looks up into the starlit sky for a moment, before staring back down at the baby, settled and suckling. Clarke hiccups, crying and smiling and feeling so much she can't make sense of it. 

"Yes. We're okay. We're okay. We're going to be okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Comments, kudos, all that jazz <3


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